Cavendish gets his wish for 2014 Grand Depart

Fireworks are launched over Leeds Town Hall after an event to announce the route of the 2014 Tour De France. Leeds will host the Grand Depart on July 5, 2014, after Yorkshire beat bids from Florence and Edinburgh to host the start of the prestigious event in its 100-year anniversary.

Jon Super/Associated Press

Fireworks are launched over Leeds Town Hall after an event to announce the route of the 2014 Tour De France. Leeds will host the Grand Depart on July 5, 2014, after Yorkshire beat bids from Florence and Edinburgh to host the start of the prestigious event in its 100-year anniversary.

PARIS – Leeds, Sheffield and London will host the opening stages of the 2014 Tour de France, when organizers hope the same fervor will be generated as six years ago when the race last began in Britain.

The first stage, the “Grand Depart,” on Saturday, July 5, will take riders from Leeds to the spa town of Harrogate on a mostly flat stage. The next day, riders will travel 124 miles from York to Sheffield on a route featuring several small but sharp climbs.

On Monday, July 7, the showcase race will go from Cambridge to London, which hosted the start of the 2007 Tour in a festive atmosphere.

“Unforgettable. That’s the word that springs to mind when I think about the Grand Depart of the Tour de France in London back in 2007,” Tour race director Christian Prudhomme said Thursday. “We hope and trust that the 2014 Grand Depart will be just as spectacular. This is my wish, and I don’t think I need to worry, as it seems very likely to come true given how impressed we were with the passion and desire of our friends from Yorkshire.”

The first stage will stretch for 118 miles and is flat until entering the iconic Dales, where the terrain becomes slightly steeper as riders race a semicircular route across the contours of the valleys. The peloton then will sweep southeast through the cathedral city of Ripon before rejoining flat roads on a long, straight finish to Harrogate.

British sprint ace Mark Cavendish, who has 23 Tour stage wins, will be keen to secure another in front of his home fans.

Prudhomme said Cavendish spoke to him personally last year and passionately urged him to give Leeds – which also happens to be the soccer team Cavendish supports – a chance to start the race.

Stage 2 will head to Huddersfield via Haworth, home of the Bronte sisters of literary fame, and from there riders will face a number of sharp ascents, the last of which is some 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the finish.

Like the first stage, the third favors sprinters such as Cavendish, taking the pack more than 105 miles through the counties of Hertfordshire and Essex before arriving in London from the northeast, via Epping Forest.

Once the pack has passed the Olympic Park, it will head for the city center. As with the Tour prologue in 2007 and the 2012 Olympic cycling road races, the final span will take cyclists through St. James’ Park and past Buckingham Palace for a spectacular finish on The Mall.

“We’re bringing the world’s greatest race from Yorkshire all the way down to London,” London Mayor Boris Johnson said by videolink to the news conference at the British Embassy in Paris. “I know it’s going to be wonderfully exciting. I’m going to be in the crowd.”

The rest of the 2014 route will be unveiled Oct. 23.

Armstrong not likely on the Tour’s honorary roster

PARIS – Lance Armstrong’s tarnished name unlikely is to be on the massive list of invitees as Tour de France organizers prepare their celebrations for the 100th race this year.

As part of the festivities, all riders who managed to finish a Tour de France have been invited for the final day, with the total number of invitations numbering about 4,000. About 500 former riders are expected to be at the finish line on the Champs-Élysées.

Asked if Armstrong would receive one, Tour race director Christian Prudhomme looked stern-faced when he said Thursday, “That seems to me to be out of place now.”

Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour titles and banned from cycling for life after a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report portrayed him as a serial drug cheat. After years of denials, he confessed to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey taped Monday and to be aired tonight and Friday night.

“No one could have imagined that he would publicly confess after years of denials, and denials that were firm and sometimes violent,” Prudhomme said after a presentation for the 2014 Tour, which will start from the English city of Leeds. “No one could have imagined that, even a few weeks ago. I can’t say more now because I don’t know exactly what he will say, but it’s obviously something striking.”

Armstrong always was the main talking point of the race when he won his seven consecutive titles from 1999 to 2005 and when he unexpectedly came out of retirement to race in the 2009 and 2010 Tours.

“For us, Armstrong is already the past; he doesn’t have the seven titles anymore,” Prudhomme said. “What you have to understand is the mechanism (behind the doping).”

Prudhomme was expected to offer further comment on Armstrong on Friday after the airing of Armstrong’s interview with Winfrey.

Sports daily L’Equipe wrote “The Night of the Liar” in a teaser on its front page looking ahead to the show.

“After more than 10 years of lies, should we believe everything that Lance Armstrong will say (Thursday) night on American television?” L’Equipe wrote.